


Sand

by gayabstractconcept



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: D/s, Daddy Kink, Daddy!Furiosa, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 05:09:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6840259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayabstractconcept/pseuds/gayabstractconcept
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neither of them know the word for this at first. Max never really had an antecedent for it, and where Furiosa is from, it’s nothing but profanity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alder_knight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alder_knight/gifts).



Neither of them know the word for this at first. Max never really had an antecedent for it, and where Furiosa is from, it’s nothing but profanity.

Nonetheless, somehow in the arid stretches, here it is.

That first blue night, after he’d fallen asleep in the cab of her rig – a gesture of something so like trust he almost pukes up his empty guts when he realizes – is when he realizes he’s dealing with something he’s never encountered before.

And it’s that first night, after she’d seen his lips move in his sleep and clenched her long fingers around the wheel to keep from touching them – an impulse towards something so like gentleness she almost nosedives the rig into the first boulder she sees – is when she realizes there’s a way of being she wasn’t taught about by her many mothers or by Joe and his hordes.

A way of being powerful that isn’t just about cruelty. A way of coexisting with someone that isn’t just about violence.

When she comes up behind him, he feels her footsteps on the sand before she speaks. It’s as dark as it ever gets, moonlight diffused through endless smog, and he turns his head to listen with his good ear, see the glint of light off the whites of her eyes.

Can I talk to you, she says, and he follows her to the other side of the rig to not look at her eyes while she tells him about her plan. 

He wants to say, I don't want to watch you die too, but it sticks in his dry mouth and comes out sounding like, I'll make my own way, and both of them feel like they've been struck.

She is silent, turns to go, and that's so much worse that he opens his mouth again without knowing what's going to come out. 

You know, he hears himself say, hope is a mistake.

He's spent so long not using words, not being the kind of animal that uses words, not being the kind of animal that interacts with other animals beyond consuming or failing to consume each other, that the part of him that once knew how to do it is full of rust. His voice is like an engine that sputters and churns and doesn't catch.

He tries again, though her breath is so near him he can't hear anything else over its sound. There's something desperately important, so desperate it feels like the thing that made him break free of the grasping hands of the warboys, that made him keep fighting through the thunderdome, that made him run forever. Desperate like the need to survive. 

If you can’t fix what’s broken you’ll go insane.

She stares at him and then starts to turn away again. This fool doesn't understand why she needs to keep looking, why she needs to hold on to the falsity that there's a green place beyond the next ridge. He's never seen it. He can’t understand.

She takes a few more steps away and then stops, returns to his side in the shadow of the rig. His eyes are making little shuddering movements across the empty darkness as if he's seeing something she can't, as if the ghosts that ride him are present and wailing into his face. He can't really see her, can't tell that the others are only a few steps away, can't extricate himself from the grip of his dead.

Fool, she says softly, to get his attention, and his eyes roll in their sockets until they fix on her face.

He's trying to say something, something that will let her understand the vain yearning in him to hitch the rig to his spine and drag it for her until it’s beyond the salt, somewhere green, somewhere new. He works his rotten tongue inside his dusty mouth and croaks out something useless. 

I can’t save you, he tells her, and she hits him in the face. He comes up fists first without intending to and for a little while they fight by reflex until he staggers a few paces away with his palms up saying, wait, wait – and she drops the two-by-four.

None of the others were disturbed by the muffled sounds of their scuffle, and Furiosa casts a quick look at their sleeping bodies, the Dag’s salt-white skin smeared against the desert like something not entirely real, Capable curled around herself and guarded by a crouching Nux, the Vuvalini keeping dispassionate watch and cleaning sand out of their weapons.

She raises her hands towards him, as if to say, _gentle,_ as if to say, _I won’t hurt you,_ and he nods, stilling. 

I am not to be saved, she says, and he realizes there’s been a part of him this whole time that’s had it backwards, that’s stuck in another time, stuck seeing another face when he looks at her, stuck seeing her torn apart and spurting blood like oil and joining the ranks of ghosts that trail him shrieking _your fault, your fault, your fault_. His brain grinds like an engine with sand in it and he realizes he’s fallen to his knees. His eye throbs where she’d struck him.

She takes a step towards him, and then another, and as her shadow falls over him he tries not to flinch.

The flow of her voice sound like how he imagines a river as she says _it’s okay_ and touches his shoulder with her callused fingertips. It’s like the river is flowing through her touch and into him, rehydrating the tissues of his body, letting his mouth soften and wetten, letting his dry muscles unclench.

It’s a completely unfamiliar sensation – not pain – so not pain – he doesn’t know how to react to it. He takes a breath and it feels like the first deep breath he’s taken in his life, the life that started when his knees hit the asphalt beside the twisted lump of meat that had once been his wife. Since that life started, everything before that moment faded into the faint threads of a dream that slip away upon waking, dragged from the clawing fingers of his mind by a world of fire and blood. 

He hears her voice in his head, though he doesn’t know if she’s spoken aloud. _You don’t have to be that person for me. That’s not what I need from you._

What, then, he mutters, what? 

She’s standing behind him and, though she’s out of his field of vision, he feels her drop into a crouch so that when she speaks, he feels her breath on his skin. _Be reliable for me. Can you do that?_

He nods once, yes, yes, that’s right, that’s what he can be for her, and her fingers move from his shoulder to the bare back of his neck, touches his brainstem, presses through his skin on his instinct to survive and alters it inescapably, warps it to her own will.

Good, she says, slides her fingers up his skull, twines them into his hair, he holds himself so still. He wonders for a moment what he’s waiting for but lets the question slip away. He’ll find out when he needs to know. That’s what it means to have someone like her.

She pulls his head back and he sees her eyes for the first time, and they’re so still. His neck aches but he doesn’t resist the pressure of her grip, and he thinks that might please her. In the cool air, his face is tipped up, starlight raining down on it, and he feels unafraid like he hasn’t felt unafraid in what must be years.

He sees the small muscles in her throat move as she swallows and then, without warning, she spits in his face. 

He feels the wetness puddle in the corner of his eye, track along the crease next to his nose, smear down his skin, water, her water, rivers from the old world, rain that’s not poison, water pouring into the earth and bringing life and movement to the dust, water on his skin, the most intimate touch she could give him, water bathing him until all of the blood of all of the people he’s killed, all of the people who died because of him, blood sluicing off his skin in the caress of the water, letting him rise naked and clean and a different creature than he was before, water beginning to dry cool on his face in the blue desert.

 _Fool_ , she tells him, pleasure making her voice thrum in her throat like a V8, watching her saliva shine on his skin, _you’re mine._

And he agrees, gasping for air, parched for her, soaked in dust, renewed, yours.


End file.
